5 ms·

I've always wondered, what are people like you doing on HN anyway, a forum that is really far away from any notion of free speech.

briantakita 4y ago
It's always fun to introduce glitches into the matrix of groupthink to demonstrate the futility of dogma veiling simple social power dynamics (aka "soft power")...otoh, HN has some great content. Like any platform with great content, people have to learn how to interact with each other in a pro-social way. People are just going to disagree at times on some subjects. And that's ok...These disagreements often lead to motivate one to create solutions which leads to innovation. The "we don't like your kind round here" meme is backwards thinking & leads to the cloistered groupthink that is the subject of comedy. The game of "soft power" is a net-negative game so there are winners & losers. The losers don't just go away, so they need to advocate for their God given rights to survive. There is no option not to play the game because the game is ever expanding until the particular systems collapse.
machina_ex_deus 4y ago
What's the point in getting someone who already agrees to listen? You want to find those willing to listen that don't agree. I don't want to reinforce my ego that I have people agreeing with me, I could get plenty of that if I wanted, I want those disagreeing and willing to listen to see the other side. I want to see what's actually a convincing argument that's changing opinion. But hey, everyone's so used to the likes and points system, they forget that speaking is to covey a message, not to get internet points for your ego. If that's all free speech means to you, no wonder you give it away easily. I happily paid those -5 internet points. If that surprised any of the downvoters, maybe they will think again what's the point of speech that does nothing. It's funny how none of them responded with actual speech, maybe because they think talking is about getting those downvotes and not about interacting with people.
- striking 4y ago
  > maybe they will think again what's the point of speech that does nothing Downvotes are meaningful speech too. Usually people use them when they think your comment isn't worth a reply or doesn't belong here. They exist to prevent people from feeling like they have to reply to something that otherwise wouldn't be worth replying to, as a way of communicating to the poster that their post is extremely uninteresting. One thing they actually do is move your comment down the page. That being said, since you hold this opinion so strongly, maybe it's reasonable for me to point out: although the article mostly covers real and hypothetical laws that could make Twitter harder to moderate, there's also the question of how Twitter is supposed to make enough money to stay afloat, and how it can continue to do that if advertisers would rather not advertise on a platform that might show their ad next to messaging they'd prefer not to be associated with. There's no silver bullet here even if they did ignore EU laws or whatever it is you find unreasonable.
- allears 4y ago
  Have you read Karl Popper's "The Paradox of Tolerance?" Here's a link: https://twitter.com/iamlejo/status/1331963359529414662/photo/1 https://twitter.com/iamlejo/status/1331963359529414662/photo...
  - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
    Have you? Comic books don't count. "if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols." The measure of intolerance is basically whoever tries censorship and violence first. Ironically they often justify it with one or two sentences cherry-picked from Popper.
throwawayacc4 4y ago
Relative to other large social media sites (reddit, Tumblr, Twitter pre-Elon, etc.) HN is a bastion of free speech. Reddit being possibly the least free of them all.
- someNameIG 4y ago
  Reddit is petty free speech from the site admin perspective. The vast majority of moderation on Reddit is done by the community (i.e. subreddit mods), no one is stopping you from creating your own free speech absolutists subs.
- musk_micropenis 4y ago
  HN is much more heavily moderated than those websites. Which is a good thing, it's why conversations here tend to be of a higher quality. I don't think the HN style of moderation would scale to places like Reddit even if they wanted it.
  - throwawayacc4 4y ago
    >HN is much more heavily moderated than those websites. This couldn't be further from the truth. Reddit is orders of magnitude more heavily moderated than HN. Your average run of the mill subreddit has more moderators than the entirety of HN. >Which is a good thing, it's why conversations here tend to be of a higher quality. I think the conversations here are higher because of the userbase, not dang's moderation. The site doesn't lend itself to the toxic userbase that reddit and tumblr has. >I don't think the HN style of moderation would scale to places like Reddit even if they wanted it. There are subreddits with more scale than HN, with more moderation. Scale is definitely not an issue.
    - abruzzi 4y ago
      Don’t forget that HN is also self moderated through upvotes/downvotes (I’ve never used Reddit, does it have similar?). This does two things IMO—first, low quality posts become less and less readable which reduces incentive to make inflammatory posts, but second it also imposes self moderation (except for users that resort to throwaway accounts) since losing too many karma points removes some of your ability to participate on the site.

briantakita 4y ago

It's always fun to introduce glitches into the matrix of groupthink to demonstrate the futility of dogma veiling simple social power dynamics (aka "soft power")...otoh, HN has some great content. Like any platform with great content, people have to learn how to interact with each other in a pro-social way. People are just going to disagree at times on some subjects. And that's ok...These disagreements often lead to motivate one to create solutions which leads to innovation. The "we don't like your kind round here" meme is backwards thinking & leads to the cloistered groupthink that is the subject of comedy. The game of "soft power" is a net-negative game so there are winners & losers. The losers don't just go away, so they need to advocate for their God given rights to survive. There is no option not to play the game because the game is ever expanding until the particular systems collapse.

machina_ex_deus 4y ago

What's the point in getting someone who already agrees to listen? You want to find those willing to listen that don't agree. I don't want to reinforce my ego that I have people agreeing with me, I could get plenty of that if I wanted, I want those disagreeing and willing to listen to see the other side. I want to see what's actually a convincing argument that's changing opinion. But hey, everyone's so used to the likes and points system, they forget that speaking is to covey a message, not to get internet points for your ego. If that's all free speech means to you, no wonder you give it away easily. I happily paid those -5 internet points. If that surprised any of the downvoters, maybe they will think again what's the point of speech that does nothing. It's funny how none of them responded with actual speech, maybe because they think talking is about getting those downvotes and not about interacting with people.

striking 4y ago
> maybe they will think again what's the point of speech that does nothing Downvotes are meaningful speech too. Usually people use them when they think your comment isn't worth a reply or doesn't belong here. They exist to prevent people from feeling like they have to reply to something that otherwise wouldn't be worth replying to, as a way of communicating to the poster that their post is extremely uninteresting. One thing they actually do is move your comment down the page. That being said, since you hold this opinion so strongly, maybe it's reasonable for me to point out: although the article mostly covers real and hypothetical laws that could make Twitter harder to moderate, there's also the question of how Twitter is supposed to make enough money to stay afloat, and how it can continue to do that if advertisers would rather not advertise on a platform that might show their ad next to messaging they'd prefer not to be associated with. There's no silver bullet here even if they did ignore EU laws or whatever it is you find unreasonable.
allears 4y ago
Have you read Karl Popper's "The Paradox of Tolerance?" Here's a link: https://twitter.com/iamlejo/status/1331963359529414662/photo/1 https://twitter.com/iamlejo/status/1331963359529414662/photo...
- LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
  Have you? Comic books don't count. "if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols." The measure of intolerance is basically whoever tries censorship and violence first. Ironically they often justify it with one or two sentences cherry-picked from Popper.

throwawayacc4 4y ago

Relative to other large social media sites (reddit, Tumblr, Twitter pre-Elon, etc.) HN is a bastion of free speech. Reddit being possibly the least free of them all.

someNameIG 4y ago
Reddit is petty free speech from the site admin perspective. The vast majority of moderation on Reddit is done by the community (i.e. subreddit mods), no one is stopping you from creating your own free speech absolutists subs.
musk_micropenis 4y ago
HN is much more heavily moderated than those websites. Which is a good thing, it's why conversations here tend to be of a higher quality. I don't think the HN style of moderation would scale to places like Reddit even if they wanted it.
- throwawayacc4 4y ago
  >HN is much more heavily moderated than those websites. This couldn't be further from the truth. Reddit is orders of magnitude more heavily moderated than HN. Your average run of the mill subreddit has more moderators than the entirety of HN. >Which is a good thing, it's why conversations here tend to be of a higher quality. I think the conversations here are higher because of the userbase, not dang's moderation. The site doesn't lend itself to the toxic userbase that reddit and tumblr has. >I don't think the HN style of moderation would scale to places like Reddit even if they wanted it. There are subreddits with more scale than HN, with more moderation. Scale is definitely not an issue.
  - abruzzi 4y ago
    Don’t forget that HN is also self moderated through upvotes/downvotes (I’ve never used Reddit, does it have similar?). This does two things IMO—first, low quality posts become less and less readable which reduces incentive to make inflammatory posts, but second it also imposes self moderation (except for users that resort to throwaway accounts) since losing too many karma points removes some of your ability to participate on the site.